Bankrupty~Disbandment

[Mr. Do]

This is a bit of a technical question, but does anyone know how the game decides what exactly is to be disbanded or sold if a nation runs out of money?

I've played games with units that specifically cost zero upkeep and cannot be disbanded by the player, yet they're often the first to be automatically disbanded when you run out of money. On the other hand, I've seen AI players reduced to one city but with a massive naval fleet which completely drains their economy, and they end up keeping their massive fleets, but they lose all their improvements, leading to boring capitals consisting solely of a palace, so they don't even stand a chance as a city-state.

Anyone know how it goes?

 

[Turner]

I heard once that it was one unit and one improvement until you're in the black again. I think they also said it was the newest unit and newest improvement. Not sure, tho.

 

[Mr. Do]

Ahh, that would actually seem to be a logical way of doing it (I have such low expectations for how the game is programmed some time), and would concur with my own observations...

 

[Ginger_Ale]

I believe it will go for an improvement first - I've never had a unit disbanded, though it seems logical. In some ancient age games, I'll have -2 gpt and 1 gold, so it sells my granary in a city. It would only do a unit if you were in a Republic/Democracy, or you were over your 'unit supported' quota.

PS: What would happen if you had no improvements and were not over the unit support limit? Would it be like Chieftan where you don't lose anything?

 

[Tomoyo]

I would suppose yes, Ginger Ale.

 

[Renata]

I had it take a unit once very early in the game. I was running -1gpt (from my starting 10g) due to unit costs, with one city with no improvements. I had decided to keep science at max for as long as possible despite the deficit, but I forgot about the effect it would have to build a settler. When I did, that sent my treasury into the negative numbers, and I lost a warrior, IIRC.

So from that, I would guess the game takes one of your cheapest units, not the most recently built. It may or may not be the same for improvements.

I seem to recall from a conversation in a SG somewhere that the game will take no more than one unit and one improvement per turn. This could account for the OCC AIs with huge navies and no improvements: they probably lost units and improvements one per turn until all the improvements were gone, but still had units left over. It takes a while to burn through a 100-unit military at one per turn.

Renata

 

[Grille]

As Renata said, I recall from vanilla that 1 unit and 1 improvement (one of which ever...) per turn got disbanded during times of deficit spending with nothing but dust in the bank.
I used to have a republic then; based on that, I just assumed it was *always* 1 unit and 1 imp per turn as generalized penalty... Interesting point by Ginger; I did certainly not consider (a possible) free unit support here.

That hints to some kind of early game exploit. Pay muchos gpt and spend commerce on research/lux tax. Guess you should own the pyramids then, though, which counts me automatically out.

 

[Mr. Do]

So from that, I would guess the game takes one of your cheapest units, not the most recently built.

I think that would also go some way to explaining the situation I noted, where a free unit produced by a small wonder was disbanded over other units- the free unit's value in the editor was zero, so if the value is increased then it shouldn't be disbanded over other units... good.